Carlos Cardoso murder trial update 27 November

BCM fraud at the forefront

Maputo, 27 Nov (AIM) - The 1996 fraud, which removed the equivalent of 14 million
dollars from Mozambique's largest bank, the BCM, occupied centre stage on Wednesday
at the trial of the six men charged with murdering the country's top investigative
journalist, Carlos Cardoso.

One of the accused, Vicente Ramaya, the former manager of the BCM branch where
the fraud occurred, claimed that the fraud could have had nothing to do with
Cardoso's death, because "neither Cardoso, nor any other Mozambican journalist,
knew anything about the fraud".

This was a breathtaking claim: all the more so because, as Ramaya was speaking,
journalists in the audience were reading photocopies of several of Cardoso's
articles on the fraud, which revealed Cardoso's detailed knowledge of the BCM's
workings, and of the various illicit activities of the Abdul Satar family, whose
accounts at Ramaya's BCM branch were the conduit through which the money was
syphoned out. The court referred repeatedly to Cardoso's article, published
in the 9 May 2000 issue of his paper "Metical", entitled "Biographical
Notes on the First Cheque of the Fraud", which looked in detail at the
first fraudulent transaction by Momade Assife Abdul Satar, which Ramaya should
have stopped, but did not.

Ramaya demanded the right to reply, which Cardoso gladly granted, alongside
an editorial, on 16 May 2000, welcoming Ramaya's proposal for a public debate
on the issue.

Ramaya told the court that this editorial showed that Cardoso had changed his
mind about the fraud. In fact, the editorial does not retract a single word
of the original article, merely noting that some of Ramaya's claims are in flagrant
contradiction with the information from Cardoso's sources.

The public debate never happened. Ramaya said he assumed this was because nobody
in the BCM management would agree to it. But the truth is that Ramaya never
resumed contact with Cardoso. AIM has seen the set of detailed questions on
the fraud that Cardoso faxed to Ramaya and to which he never replied.

Ramaya took every opportunity to attack the old BCM board of directors, whom
he claimed were the genuine beneficiaries ofthe fraud, working in league with
Asslam Abdul Satar (currently a fugitive, believed to be living in Dubai).

Ramaya claimed that Asslam Satar had been told to deposit the fraudulent cheques
"in the accounts of companies, but instead he used the accounts of relatives
and friends" (accounts which just happened to have been opened at Ramaya's
branch).

He alleged there were a series of other frauds in the BCM. "Mozambican
journalists thought it was 14 million dollars, but the true amount was 302 million",
he said.

If he knew that theft on a massive scale was taking place, why didn't he approach
the banking supervision department in the Bank of Mozambique?, asked Lucinda
Cruz, lawyer for the Cardoso family. (At the time this department was headed
by Antonio Siba- Siba Macuacua, a young economist much respected for his integrity.
He was murdered in August 2001, when he was interim chairman of the crisis-ridden
Austral Bank).

Ramaya said he did not trust the central bank, and he had to be careful who
he talked to - he claimed he had received two death threats. The only people
he trusted, he added, were the attorneys investigating the fraud.

It is, however, precisely those attorneys who were accused of disorganising
the case, and of hiding evidence, so that it could never come to trial. An arrest
warrant was issued for one of them, Diamantino dos Santos, in January 2001,
and he is currently on the run.

Ramaya also attacked the BCM's lawyer, Albano Silva. Much of his May 2000 reply
to Cardoso's article had consisted of insults against Silva, and now he added
allegations that would be defamatory anywhere outside a courtroom.

He claimed that, in a meeting with Silva in 1996, the lawyer had urged him
to take the full blame for the fraud, and exonerate the board of directors.
Ramaya added that this year Silva had met with prosecution witness Oswaldo Muianga
and had bribed him to incriminate both Ramaya and Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest
son of President Joaquim Chissano.

Judge Augusto Paulino demanded some proof for this accusation. "In this
prison you get to know everything", claimed Ramaya. "It's an absolute
certainty".

But prison chatter does not meet Paulino's standards of evidence, and he demanded
something more substantial. "I will have to speak to the prisoners first",
said Ramaya. "I will have to collect the data".

Vicente Ramaya's wealth

Maputo, 27 Nov (AIM) - Former bank manager Vicente Ramaya, one of the six men
on trial for the murder of Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso, told the court
on Wednesday that he did not receive any money from the 1996 fraud that took
the equivalent of 14 million US dollars from his branch of the Commercial Bank
of Mozambique (BCM).

In that case, what could be the explanation for the sudden wealth he displayed
in the late 1990s? He told the court he had received a gift of 1,000 dollars
from his in-laws, and had an income of "400 to 500 dollars a month"
from renting out a beach-side house in his home city of Pemba. In addition he
earned money from "consultancy work in the banking area".

Was that really enough to cover a loan of 450,000 dollars granted by former
customs official Maria Candida Cossa to Pemba businessman Zulfikar Sulemane?
Ramaya claimed that this had operated on a basis of personal trust. "Candida
knew me, she didn't know Zulfikar", he said. "I signed without hesitation,
because I knew that 700,000 dollars for Zulfikar's project had been approved".

Ramaya claimed that this 700,000 dollars was to come from the International
Finance Corporation, the private lending arm of the World Bank. But in fact
the project (which Ramaya did not explain) did not secure a favourable Environmental
Impact Assessment.

If Ramaya is the financial expert he claims to be, he should have known that
World Bank bodies do not provide funds without a favourable Environmental Impact
Assessment.

The 700,000 dollars was not forthcoming, and "Candida was demanding that
I solve the problem". Ramaya was evasive about if and how the 450,000 dollars
lent by Candida Cossa was repaid.

Meanwhile, Ramaya was buying luxury cars from Fernando Magno. This ties Ramaya
directly to the world of crime, since Magno is one of the associates of the
Abdul Satar family charged with the 1999 attempted murder of the BCM's lawyer,
Albano Silva.

Magno is also a trafficker in vehicles, and Ramaya said that in 1998 he had
purchased an Audi A4 and a BMW, both "almost new", from Magno for
between 350 and 400 million meticais (at late 19998 exchange rates, that would
be somewhere between 30,000 and 34,000 US dollars).

A few months later the customs service seized these vehicles. In April 1999,
Ramaya took action to get them back, and a judge gave a provisional ruling in
his favour.

Nonetheless, he told Magno "I think there's something wrong about these
vehicles" - and so Magno replaced them with two more BMWs. So the price
of a nearly new BMW for Ramaya was between 15,000 and 17,000 dollars (including
the massive customs duties that are paid on luxury cars).

It thus should have come as no surprise that a year later, these vehicles were
also seized. According to the article run in Cardoso's paper, "Metical",
at the time, customs suspected that the cars were stolen.

Ramaya repeatedly told the court that it was unthinkable that either Nyimpine
Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano, or Octavio Muthemba,
former chairman of the privatised Austral Bank, which came close to ruin when
he was running it, could have had anything to do with Cardoso's murder.

Asked how he could be so certain, Ramaya said he had been introduced to Chissano
Jr by Candida Cossa. Ramaya said he met him three times, twice at Cossa's house,
and once at Nyimpine Chissano's company, Expresso Tours. These encounters must
have left a striking impression on Ramaya, for he cited no other evidence to
back up his insistence that Nyimpine could have had no involvement in the assassination.

As for Octavio Muthemba, Ramaya admitted that he did not know him personally
at all. He had a "close friendship" with Octavio's brother, Levy Muthemba,
to whom he had given "advice on merchandising". From these contacts,
he knew that the Muthemba family had "moral values", and so ruled
out the possibility that a member of the family whom he did not know could ever
have committed murder.

Anibalzinho's mother to testify

Maputo, 27 Nov (AIM) - Judge Augusto Paulino has ordered Teresinha Mendonca,
the mother of the fugitive Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"),
to take the witness stand in the trial of her son and five others accused of
the murder of Mozambique's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso.

Anibalzinho is accused of organising the death squad that killed Cardoso on
22 November 2000. He disappeared from the Maputo top security prison on 1 September,
and is now being tried in absentia.

On Wednesday, the public prosecutor, Dr Mourao, requested that a Mozambican
TV news interview with Mendonca be shown as evidence.

One of the defence lawyers, Eduardo Jorge, representing prominent money lender
Momade Assife Abdul Satar, objected. He claimed that the interview could be
classified as a "private conversation" between Mendonca and the TV
reporter, and such conversations were not admissible as evidence.

Paulino dismissed this argument. "Statements made to the media are not,
and never have been, private in nature", he said. "These statements
were made with the intention of being broadcast by Mozambican Television".

In the TV clip, played to the court, Mendonca admitted that she knows where
her son is, and maintains regular contact with him. (She has, however, given
other media contradictory answers, at times saying Anibalzinho is in London,
and at other times, in South Africa).

Mendonca said that everything revealed in court about her son receiving money
from Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano, "is
a pure lie. My son never had any business with Nyimpine".

She said it was Momade Satar "better than anyone else" who knew all
about the murder. "I have proof of this", she said. "I am not
afraid of any Pakistani coming to kill me" (The Abdul Satar family originated
in Pakistan.) Repeatedly Mendonca claimed she had proof against Satar, and proof
that Nyimpine Chissano was not involved. "I have proof, and It will be
shown at the appropriate time", she said.

Paulino thought the appropriate time was straightaway - but Mendonca was not
in court on Wednesday. He overruled objections from Anibalzinho's lawyer, Simeao
Cuamba, and ordered that Mendonca be notified to give evidence from the witness
stand.

Weapon not found

Maputo, 27 Nov (AIM) - The prosecution in the trial of six people charged with
the November 2000 murder of Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso on Wednesday
produced in court an AK-47 rifle which it believed might be the murder weapon.

This gun, together with an ammunition clip containing 19 bullets, had been
found inside a black rucksack, abandoned in a Maputo rubbish bin.

The police received an anonymous tip-off last Thursday from the gun's illicit
owner. The policeman who took the call said he could hear a discussion in the
background in which the caller said, in the Shangaan language, "I'm getting
rid of this. It only brings trouble".

The caller gave instructions as to where the gun would be found, the policeman
immediately drove to the rubbish bin and retrieved it.

But the prosecution's hopes were soon dashed. The man who has confessed to
firing the shots, Carlitos Rashid, was shown the weapon, and immediately denied
that this was the gun he had used.

The gun from the rubbish bin had a sawn off barrel, but the one he used to
murder Cardoso did not. Nor had he ever seen the black bag before.

A second member of the death squad, Manuel Fernandes ("Escurinho")
was not sure about the gun, since he had not actually handled the murder weapon.
But he was sure that the black rucksack was not the right bag.

Rashid had testified on Monday that both the AK-47 and a second gun used during
the assassination, a Makarov pistol, had been hidden in the garden of an aunt
of the man accused of leading the hit team, Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho").

But when the poice went to the aunt's home, in the Maputo suburb of Jardim,
they found no guns. The police assume that they have been moved somewhere else.
This was not particularly surprising. The trial is being broadcast live by Mozambican
radio and TV - so immediately Rashid made his confession, Anibalzinho's associates
knew they had to move the guns.